Aptitude

By Natalie Corbett Sampson

“Akin to the haunting subtleties of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Lowry's The Giver, Natalie Corbett Sampson delivers in Aptitude a richly-imagined dystopian world, which seems scarily all too plausible."— Jo Treggiari, author of Ashes, Ashes

Hessa is busy marking her students’ assignments when the Protectors arrive at her door. Naive and confused, she’s swept away by the city’s authorities and imprisoned before she can even figure out what’s happening.

But it doesn’t take long for her to piece it together once the Judicians visit her cell. Hessa is left alone with several horrific facts: A man she loves is dead. That man was not her husband. It was her fault. And she’s on trial for the crime.

Set in a dystopian future where everyone has a role to fulfill and no one is given a choice in their life’s path, Aptitude is the story of a young woman’s struggle to decide between two men — one that society chose for her, and one she’s fallen in love with.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Natalie Corbett Sampson
• Release date: Dec 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9780987994134

Natalie Corbett Sampson

Natalie lives outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia with her husband and kids (furry and bipedal). She is the author of Game Plan (November 2013), Aptitude (September 2015), It Should Have Been a #GoodDay (February 2016) and Take These Broken Wings (February 2017). Natalie carves out time to write between taxiing athletes, pianists, academics and social butterflies to their various events and her day job as a speech language pathologist. Natalie also enjoys sports, photography, art and reading.

Book preview

NATALIE CORBETT SAMPSON

Clubhouse Press

Aptitude

Copyright © 2015 by Natalie Corbett Sampson

All rights reserved

Cover art © Emma Dolan. All rights reserved

Ebook formatting by Dog-ear Book Design.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to the actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Second Edition, December 2016

Clubhouse Press

www.NatalieCorbettSampson.com

For L.A.R., who only knows love.

Contents

1 Mot

2 Mbili

3 Telu

4 Ceithir

5 Vyf

6 yAssát

7 Luiknek

8 Osiem

9 Nigon

10 Iota

11 Odinnadtsat’

12 Tinikarua

13 Trayodasa

14 Quattuordecim

15 Fünfzhen

16 Seize

17 Zeventien

18 Akhtsn

19 Tis at ashar

20 Ni ju

21 Ikkisa

22 Èr shí èr

23 Veintitrés

24 Twenty-Four

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Natalie Corbett Sampson

Sample from Take These Broken Wings

1

Mot

The sound of footsteps started as uncertain whispers and grew into a hurried, pounding rhythm that reverberated through the hollow tunnel of the hall toward my cell. As the volume increased, my heart leaped and sped so that when the footsteps halted outside the door, my heart felt lodged in my throat. Silence. Then the hum of the security palm panel replaced the echoing footfalls, and I held my breath to find out who was on the other side of the door.

The door slid aside with a burst of lemony perfume on hot, stale air and admitted two people. A tall, lanky woman in a blue suit pushed her way in first before the door was all the way open. Her jacket fell neatly to the width of her hips and gaped to show a lighter blue blouse underneath. Her pants were fitted but held a crisp crease falling straight down the front of each leg to point at her shiny black shoes. The two-inch-wide band sewn into the upper sleeve of her right arm was bright blue. She was a Judician. Her dark hair was short and meticulously placed, sweeping away from her face into a swirling spiral over her right ear. The particular style drove me to thrust my fingers through my own hair that hadn’t been brushed in… I couldn’t say when. I tucked the flyaway strands that had fallen loose behind my ears and tugged at my grey shirt to smooth the wrinkles that must have been there.

Behind her stood a shorter, rounder person, a man who looked younger than me. His Judician band, of thinner material, made the sleeve of his jacket sag askew against the arm hanging at his side. He was bald except for a circle of dark hair hedging the top of his head. One hand held a briefcase, the other pushed his glasses up his rounded, reddened nose. He stank. As he stepped through the door, a thick whiff of body odour cut through the lemon scent hovering around the woman, and I concentrated on not wrinkling my nose.

The door slid shut, and I was trapped again, this time with the severe, gangly woman and her opposite. The room was not big enough for the three of us.

The woman strode toward me and thrust out her hand with a force that propelled me in a diffident step backwards until my calves met the edge of the bed. I don’t know why, but I noticed right then that her nails were immaculate, painted red and filed to a fashionably sharp point. Mine were chewed, curled up and hidden in my palms.

Hessa Black. My name is Counsel Gallie. I’m the prosecutor assigned to your case. I didn’t take her hand. She dropped it to her hip and turned her attention to the screen she’d placed on the small table. Your turn, she said without looking up from the screen.

My turn? But then the round man stepped forward. Hi, Hessa. I’m Counsel Finch, I’m your representative. His eyes were watery and brown. He looked at me too straight, too long, and I looked away first.

Sit, Gallie said as she waved her blood-coloured claws to the chair opposite the one she had claimed.

I hesitated long enough to earn a loud sigh and a pointed glare, but I had nowhere else to go. I slunk into the chair at the table, but I leaned against the back to gain as much distance from her as I could. In the corner of my eye Finch looked from Gallie to myself and around the tiny room. When his gaze fell on the corner, his face scrunched up and he took a step away then perched on the edge of my bed. He took out his own screen from his case and laid it across his knees, fluttering his fingers over it. The light from the screen glowed up on his face, leaving dark shadows in the hollows of his eyes.

Gallie’s screen flashed as it flicked between pages, following the commands of her fingers. Her eyes fluttered under her lids, painted to match the identifying blue strip on her sleeve. She said nothing but occasionally emitted an audible release of air that carried exasperation. For long, silent moments I studied them while they studied what must have been me documented in text and photos on their screens.

My fingers worried at the three inches of skin on my lower arm smoothened by the constant presence of my missing communicator. I didn’t trust them. Hell, I didn’t trust anyone. Not since they came the night before and demanded I go with them. If only Toan had been there … what would he have said? What would he have done? Would I still be here?

It was late when they came to the door, past social curfew and into my favourite hour of the day. I loved the calm quiet of late evening, keeping the lights low and the scenters on relaxing lavender, scrounging to find a few more minutes of productivity in the day. I had just opened my students’ assignments on my computer in my home office. The columns of numbers on the screen threw shadows around the small dimly lit room. The intercom in the wall startled me with unregistered person at front door, and I jumped, knocking my hot tea across the screen. I took just long enough to strip off my sweatshirt and drop it on top of the mess, hoping it would sop up the tea before I hurried down to the front door in my grey T-shirt. So when I answered the door, I had a glare on my face and a smart-ass remark on my tongue that I swallowed when I saw them. I wonder if the mess is still there, if my computer still works or if the tea seeped into the circuitry and destroyed it.

There were three of them. Protectors, dressed in dark grey uniforms with thick black vests, dark hats and dark glasses. I couldn’t see their eyes; instead, the reflection of my stunned face looked back at me from each lens. Their faces were unyielding masks with drawn-in brows and pinched, closed mouths. One met my startled greeting by grunting my name: Hessa Black? I nodded just a bit and unknowingly sealed my fate. A second man held out his communicator, showing identification.

You’ll come with us, he said. It wasn’t an invitation or a request.

Is someone hurt? My mind flashed back to an emergency call on a dark night years ago, and I shivered in the warm air.

You’ll come with us, the same man repeated, as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

I — I need to change. My voice sounded feeble and lame, and my uncertainty was proven by the fact that I stood still in my house clothes, waiting for their permission instead of turning away to go get dressed.

There’s no need. We’ll leave now.

Maybe I should have protested, but they were the law, and as naive as it sounds now, I didn’t realize I was in trouble.

I folded my arms against the cold and stepped into the night. The house door slid behind me, and out of habit I said, Lock door to the security system. I followed one Protector while two followed me. Too close, so that I smelled the garlic on one Protector’s breath. Beyond the halo of our door light, the night was dark. Our movement toward the road initiated the streetlights, and they slipped on, illuminating a long black car parked at the curb. I had only ridden in a private car once before; it seems luxury transportation only comes with very bad circumstances. My breaths shortened, and my heart raced until I felt dizzy, and the car and street and houses seemed to tip in front of me. I stopped. Cold fingers curled around my elbow and pulled me forward. As we approached, the rear door swept up and open, and I had no choice but to fold myself in and sit on the cool seat facing the back of the car. It smelled of bitter old smoke, and my throat pulled even tighter against the noxious taste carried through the scent. The seat belt snaked with a whir from my right shoulder to my left hip and snapped into place. I didn’t feel safer; my chest bone was squeezed between the pressing seat belt and my pounding heart.

One Protector slid in after me. He sat opposite, riding forward, facing me with his body but keeping his shielded eyes turned away. The car was big, but with him in the space I felt crowded. I folded my arms and tucked my legs under me, trying to make myself small. As the car shifted into motion I asked again, Is someone hurt? but he didn’t even acknowledge my presence, let alone my question. From then on I kept my eyes on the window, watching the lights behind us switch off as we passed out of their sensor range and my street fell dark. I tried to remember if there was somewhere I’d been or something I’d done, or said, that might have triggered a warning through my communicator trace. Some kind of suspicious misunderstanding to warrant their reaction, something I could explain easily enough if they’d just give me the chance. Or a slip. But the evidence was gone, disintegrated into nothing. Within moments they whisked me away through the empty streets and echoing halls to the room where I now sat waiting for the Judician antitheses to tell me why I was there.

The cell was small, three meters square, if that. One corner hugged a mattress on a metal frame that squeaked each time I moved on it. The mattress was wrapped in stiff white sheets and a scratchy red blanket. The pillow was hard and flat. I’d tried to fold it in half, thinking if I lay still it wouldn’t flip open, but when I got that close, it reeked of something unfamiliar, something sour. I threw it to the floor, where it landed under the table, and laid my head on my arms instead.

Gallie and I sat in the opposite corner of the cell, at the heavy silver table. The top of the table was shiny, with metallic grain running through. I’d spent the morning sitting in the chair, running my fingers along the cool grain lines, studying them as if they were a map illustrating my route into that hole. Or maybe out. Overhead, the white-lit ceiling hummed, which was usually the only sound, except when someone walked by the door. I think that was the worst of it — they had taken my communicator, and I missed its frequent beeps. There were no screens that whirled or muttered, no distant hover whoosh, no sirens, no voices. Just the even hum of the ceiling.

In the third corner a small oval was barely visible on the floor. The outline was a thin crack in the otherwise unmarked surface of the shiny black floor. I hadn’t even noticed it at first, until my anxiety drove me to pace. When I stalked to that corner, I heard a whoosh of air, and the oval split in two, each half sliding aside under the floor to leave a dark hole. An odd stench, a combination of sewer and chemical cleaner, wafted up to meet me. Walking away from the toilet made the oval slide closed again. I’d limited my pacing closer to the door in the fourth corner of the room after that.

Like the table, the door was metal and solid, cold and smooth when I pressed my hands against it after it closed behind the Protectors who left me there. It didn’t budge. A transparent square at eye level was almost always closed by a cover accessed from the outside. Along the length of the opposite wall, above the bed and toilet, was a thin strip of window to the outside. It was only three inches or so tall so that the light it let in was limited to a bright sliver that had traveled across the floor over the bed and toward the door since I woke early that morning. I had stood on the bed to raise my eyes to the window. There was nothing but concrete walls with jutting corners and edges that must contain miles of mazed hallways, just like the one outside the cold door.

Do you know why you’re here? Finch now asked, and my shoulders jerked up as he brought me out of my trance.

Gallie’s thin fingers swept off her screen, and it turned black. She looked up and studied me for an uncomfortable moment before taking a deep breath. I turned my head in an almost indiscernible denial. She tapped the sharp point of her fingernail on the table, the other three curled in against her palm so tightly the skin was white against her knuckles. I told you. She blew out on her pent-up breath, and in the still of the cell I felt her exhalation brush warm against my face a second after I heard it. I smelled peppermint then onion. He’s dead, Hessa, and you are being held responsible.

Toan? The whisper fell out of me as if forced out by a punch. Toan’s dead? My cracked voice pricked my throat, and my stomach heaved up pressing against my heart. If I had eaten the food they offered, I’d have vomited all over Gallie’s pristine suit. Toan’s wide, boyish smile flashed in front of my eyes as the cell and the two Judicians blurred through instant tears.

Excuse me, Counsel Gallie, but you are here to observe, not to intervene. You will have your chance in court. Finch’s watery eyes blinked at Gallie, and his eyebrows tipped inward. Gallie shrugged and waved her hand palm up at me.

Finch sighed and looked at me a breath too long before he said, No, not your match. For a second I could breathe, but then he went on. Aubin. Aubin Wallace is dead.

Aubin. The shock of hearing his name aloud momentarily cloaked the implication of his other words. My ears hummed. Aubin. Who was this man to say his name to me? How could he possibly know? I squinted at him. I pinched my lips together in defiance and bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted metallic blood. I hated him then. I willed them both away. I wanted them to leave, even though it would leave me alone. But they sat still. Gallie’s eyebrows raised and her head cocked as a sneer inched slowly across her lips. Finch looked at his hands, fingers woven together and resting on his screen in his lap.

And then the rest of his message caught up. Aubin is dead. I broke. My heart, that I had spent the last many months piecing back together, blew apart into shards that cut me as they flew. Aubin was dead. I was trapped, and Aubin was dead.

See? I told you she didn’t know. Gallie’s voice had a hint of a laugh to it. Perhaps you had better start over, Counsel Finch.

Finch looked from Gallie to me and nodded. He sat up a bit straighter and fluttered his fingers above the screen again.

When was the last time you saw Aubin Wallace?

I knew the exact date, the exact hour, but sharing less seemed safer. Eleven, I managed to squeeze out of my tight throat.

Eleven of last year? I couldn’t speak again, so I nodded. His simple question ferried me back in my memory to a moment that was so intimate, only the two of us knew it existed. Now just one, just me. I had told no one, of course; it was too dangerous. And wrong. I had walked away stiffly, my false bravado carrying me away from his wet blue eyes and his haunted insistence.

I forced myself back to the present, where I was locked in the metallic cell. What — what happened? Why am I here…? I whispered.

He is dead, that is the truth we know as of now, Finch said. The Authority has evidence that you know information which will explain the circumstances of his death further. Information that you kept secret. The Authority maintains that had you shared the information, his death would have been avoided. You are being charged as culpable in his death because of that evidence, and your failed responsibility to share it. That warrants a charge of murder.

Murder. The word bounced around in my brain, and I shook my head to try to clear it. Aubin. Just months ago he was full of curiosity and hope and wonder… How could he be…? But he was dead. What reason did these people have to lie? Aubin was dead. Murder. Could it really be my fault?

Hessa, I thought you knew all of this. Finch leaned toward me from his perch on the bed but turned to glare at Gallie when she snorted.

I wanted to scream ‘How could I?’ but I kept silent, staring at the grain lines in the table, tracing their swirls with my eyes. We need to prepare for your trial. Counsel Gallie will be narrating and presenting the evidence. He looked at her when he said this, and Gallie smiled brightly, nodding. My jaw throbbed, and I made myself release the clench. The pain only rose into my temples and pounded there instead. I am your representative.

But I … I didn’t… I was going to say I didn’t hurt anyone, but that was far from the truth. Why do they think it’s my fault?

Gallie answered, her voice sharp and fast, cutting in while Finch took a breath. There is irrefutable evidence that proves you are to blame for Aubin’s death. I have shared the information I have with your representative, so he knows the futility of challenging—

Finch stood and closed the half step between himself and Gallie. His face was flushed red and his hands were fisted, shaking. Counsel Gallie, I must remind you of your role in this meeting. You asked to be present solely to ensure no undisclosed truth was revealed. I ask you maintain your silence. They stared at each other as if I was no longer in their midst.

Of course, please proceed, Gallie finally said. Finch sighed and turned back to look at me.

Hessa, your trial will be presented through Narrative Summary Trial by Counsel Gallie. She will present the information to the judge, I will be there to ensure the information is submitted with objectivity. If you are found culpable and therefore guilty of murder, your certification will be stripped and you will be convicted to oddout containment. He glanced at Gallie, and she flashed him a wide smile. We will start in one week.

One week? I managed to push out on a panicked breath, and then swallowed down another mouthful of bile.

Finch returned to his screen, tapped and stroked the cover, then swept his fingers toward the wall. I kept my gaze locked on the metallic lines of the table, but in my periphery the black wall lit up with white letters that spelled my name. I avoided looking up.

Yes, timing is essential in a Narrative Summary Trial. Research has indicated that an immediate summary is the most reliable method to obtain the highest accuracy of truth, and testimonies are most precise closest to the event. The system moves quickly so witnesses don’t have time to forget details or generate alternate truths. Any delay in proceedings raises questions and doubts in the truth presented.

So you will tell my side?

There are no sides, Hessa. There is no indication of conflicting facts. The Judicial Authority is confident it knows the truth. Counsel Gallie’s responsibility is to provide the structural questions that will elicit the facts, and my role is to make sure those questions are not delusive or subjective. Your responsibility is to tell the truth. He blinked, twice, and his lips twitched as if he was failing an attempt to smile.

Gallie stared at me so steadily, I hoped she didn’t see me shiver. My head pounded with questions. What facts? What truth? What did I know? As if she could read my thoughts, she smiled at Finch and said, May I? but leaned forward in her chair and rushed into her next breath before he could protest. You will need to provide your concealed information that our evidence demonstrates you have. The judge will determine your guilt and liability in Aubin Wallace’s death. If you are found guilty, you will be incarcerated and submitted to the Authority’s medical sustainment program.

That is it! Finch growled.

Yes, that is all I have to say. Gallie smiled sweetly at him and stood to face him, nose to nose. Are we finished here?

Finch narrowed his eyes and stood his ground. Not quite, he spat, a spark of spittle flying off his enunciated ‘t’. Gallie grimaced and forced her smile wider before she stepped around him to stand by the door.

Hessa, do you have any questions? he asked, his voice lowered as if he could whisper to me unheard.

I had questions. Thousands of questions. So much was unknown that I didn’t know what to ask. My throat was closed, and I concentrated on pushing air in and out. My jaw locked closed, tight again, bulging pain from my teeth to my temples. I couldn’t loosen the grip and suddenly I realized if I did, I might start to scream and not stop. I shook my head.

"I will be back tomorrow. Now that you have met Counsel Gallie,